Born in Bantry, North Dakota, Pearson served four years in the U.S. Navy prior to graduating from Jamestown College in 1947.
[2] From 1951 to 1952, he was attorney-advisor for the federal Economic Stabilization Agency in Seattle, working for William J. Steinert, a former justice of the state Supreme Court.
Pearson was appointed by Governor Daniel J. Evans to the newly created Washington Court of Appeals in 1969.
Pearson authored the first Court of Appeals opinion in the initial volume of the appellate reports, State v. Tate, 1 Wn.
[4] In 1982, Governor John Spellman appointed Pearson as an associate justice of the Washington Supreme Court.